Page 3 of The Lies We Play
I call it mine because I am a reasonable woman with excellent boundaries and an extremely flexible definition of reasonable.
Legal papers cover the coffee table, marked with yellow tabs, blue tabs, pink tabs, and one aggressively orange tab I added at two in the morning last week when I decided betrayal deserved its own color. Halston sits with his back against the couch, one long leg bent, the other stretched out, papers in hand.
He reads aloud in that beautiful, growly, old-money Manhattan voice of his, the one that makes even financial ruin sound as if it should be delivered beneath stained glass.
“Pursuant to the terms of the amended trust—”
“Oh my fucking God,” Creed groans from behind me. “No one who uses pursuant deserves love.”
Halston doesn’t look up. “That feels severe.”
“It’s accurate.”
I smile into my mug. “You both understand this is nonsense, right?”
Creed’s mouth brushes my shoulder.
Not quite a kiss.
Not innocent either.
With Creed, the space between those two things is where most of my dignity has gone to die.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Then tell the husband he sounds like a haunted contract.”
“My husband is trying to understand the legal structure of his inheritance.”
“Our husband,” Creed says.
The room goes quiet.
Not awkward.
Awkward is for first dates, elevator small talk, and me pretending I don’t know exactly how many emails someone has ignored before they finally reply with, “Apologies, just seeing this.”
This is different.
Halston lowers the papers.
Creed’s arm stays around my waist, his hand spread over my stomach through the sweatshirt. He does that sometimes. Pulls me into the space he’s decided is safest: against him. His hand settles over my stomach like he’s guarding something precious, like every protective part of him has chosen me and has no intention of letting the world forget it.
Halston’s hand rests on my ankle, thumb moving over the bone in a slow, absent pass, as if touching me helps him remain human.
The gold band on my finger catches the light from the kitchen.
Each of us has one.
We only wear them here.
No one can know we’re together.
No one can know we’re married—not yet.
This is why we’re going through all these legal papers. And yes, technically, the law allowed only. Two signatures. In this case, it’s Hal’s and mine.
But listen, the law also once thought women were property, so forgive me if I’m not taking romantic architecture advice from a system with historically bad taste.
From the beginning, we made room for three.
